Fellow Division Players, Please Stop Kicking Me From Your Group

I'm trying to get into The Division's new Underground DLC, but apparently no one wants me in their group.

Two nights ago, I was matchmaking my way into the new randomised four-player co-op Underground missions in Ubisoft's morose open-world shooter. I was having a grand old time. Last night, however, I tried to do the same and kept getting kicked from the groups I joined.

I started the night with a level 174 gear score, which is about what you will have earned if you've done every story mission and side mission in the main game but haven't done a lot of endgame grinding.

I started with a "hard" mission. Recommended gear score according to the game's menus? 160.

The people I was matchmade with? 191, 195 and 211.

We went on a mission. We all died. I was ready to try again. Nope! Kicked from group.

I immediately joined a new group. They were 194, 214 and 226. I headed over to the train tracks, where missions begin.

Nope! Kicked from group.

Back to matchmaking. Remember, the recommended score for hard missions is 160, and I was at 174.

This time, I didn't even get to see the scores of the people I got matched with. I was kicked right away.

Fourth try. I was matched with a 231, 228 and a 216. One might wonder why they were running a hard mission and not a "challenging" one. Challenging missions have a recommended gear score of 200. Whatever.

We did a mission. I think we did pretty well. The 231 even dropped a nice piece of loot and then shot at me, which I took to mean he was inviting me to take it. I did. I didn't have anything to give back. Nothing that good. Bad etiquette?

We were back in the staging area, and, guess what? Kicked from group.

Note: everyone else is this game seems to be over 200!
And I thought I'd helped the team win. Bummer.

Hey, at least with all the loot from that mission I got myself up from 174 to 193!

I tried matchmaking again. For yet another hard mission, I was matched with people who were 230, 240 and 243. Would they let me play with them?

Nope!

At that point we were at five kicks for only two missions played, one of which everyone died in and the other which was a group win.

On my sixth try, I was matched with a 202, a 208 and 212. We started a mission, we all got killed, we tried again, we succeeded. And I wasn't even kicked.

I suspect I'll need to be up to 200 gear score before people stop trying to kick me as soon as they see me join their match. But I've got to wonder: Why does this game seem to only have really high-level players? Why are all these high-level players trying to play missions that are so far below their level? And would they all please stop kicking me from their groups?

The moment I stopped playing was when I was the last remaining operative in our squad, attempting the final story mission on hard and I was kicked from the game just seconds before defeating the helicopter boss. I lost all level progress, naturally, and wasted over 2 hours of my time. I don't believe any one person should have control over a squad when using public matchmaking.

Wait, two hours for the last story mission? My friend and I ran that about a dozen times to try and replace our blue gear with purples, takes like 10 minutes on Hard... something was definitely wrong with the group if you were taking that long.

Stephen, in relation to your questions about high level players, there are only two player types left really in The Divisions game world:
- The players who dropped the game when the likes of Overwatch, etc. came out and have decided to give the DLC a crack (typically players are between level 150-180).
- The players that never stopped. They continued to grind, min-maxing their rolls and will have clocked in around 300-700 hours of game time. Don't take it personally, those players just didn't have the patience to 'carry' another player even though you were at the 'recommended level'. They at the moment have the opportunity with the player base to matchmake with players at their own level and are exercising their right to find players they are happy to play with, I do hope for your sake though (if you play regularly) you get some cool people to play with.

The issue with MMO's like The Division and Destiny is that you start off with a gigantic player base, and over time the attrition rate means that only the battle hardened few continue to play when new games, meta changes, boredom, etc. has affected the player base enough that only the hardcore will remain. The DIvision has already reached this point I feel where there are very few new players, and only the dedicated/those logging in to try the DLC are left.

I feel like you might have a few more experiences with this until Christmas when other people pick up the game.

As a long time World of Warcraft player who survived the GearScore nightmare (and continues to survive the ilvl nightmare to this day) all I can do is sit back and laugh at the complaints made in this article.

stupid elitist gamers who think a number matters, (as long as someone is in range) I would rather have someone who knows what the hell they are doing because almost guaranteed some of those over 200's only got that through RNG not through skill

As much as I hate to say it the "minimum gear score" is a farce. I tried challenging last night with a gear score of 219 and a team of 230+ and I was getting one-shotted by the shotgun enemies. Keep rolling the Normal ones until you get in the high 190's and then you should be fine

Pretty sure they are running the hard missions because the time it takes to do them is obviously a lot faster and the points aren't all that bad, I've seen a graph that basically sums up 72hrs to reach level 40 underground running hard missions as opposed to a much higher hour/level for challenge

Sorry to hear you are having troubles. I can tell you why you may be kicked - you don't do nearly enough DPS to be effective on HARD missions - your DPS should be, at minimum, approx. 160-200K. You should have EVERY mod slot filled (you have a few empty). Once your DPS gets to 150K plus you are going to have more luck,